A Coffee Expert's Advice On Making Latte Art For Beginner Home Baristas

Making coffee or espresso drinks can be as simple or complicated as you'd like it to be. It's easy enough to load coffee grounds into a drip coffee maker, takes a bit more effort to grind your own beans and work a French press, and greater proficiency is required to start steaming milk for lattes or flat whites. Lattes also open new avenues to the trickiest knack of all: latte art. This unique form of expression is made by skillfully and deliberately pouring steamed milk onto the espresso to form patterns and designs. In time, you'll be showing off your artistic talent, however, if you're just starting out, your latte art is more likely to resemble a Rorschach test than a tulip.

How do you get started with latte art? We spoke to Matt Woodburn-Simmonds, an ex-barista who now runs Home Coffee Expert, and who's made quite a bit of latte art in his time. According to Woodburn-Simmonds, the simplest shape to start with is a classic one: "The heart is probably the easiest to do as it requires the least movement and changing of pouring speed. Slowly pouring in the centre of your cup and then performing a 'strike-through' motion at the end to form the heart."

That heart probably still won't come out perfectly straight away, as it's common for beginner latte artists to take several weeks to nail basic shapes. It just takes practice, like any other art medium. Keep in mind that how you pour your milk makes a big difference, as pouring faster will create thinner lines and pouring more slowly creates thicker lines. For a heart, the first step — pouring into the middle — is slower, and the strike-through — pouring in a forward straight line — is faster.

If you want to try something else, or if you're getting the hang of hearts, Matt Woodburn-Simmonds also recommends a flower with leaves, saying, "The lily is another easy design. Alternating fast and slow pouring creates the stacks of leaves as the cup fills up. You can have as many or as few stacks as you want, or as you can fit." Plants tend to be common choices; you only need a basic pattern to make a decent fern, which is also called a rosetta by baristas. Simply waggle your wrist back and forth while you pour out the milk, and you don't need to add the flower bud that the lily includes.

It usually takes many cups of espresso over a decent period of time before your latte art starts coming out clearly. If you're patient, you can just practice once a day and drink the resulting blob art for your morning latte — the placement of steamed milk can vaguely alter the taste of a latte when you first start drinking, but it blends together soon enough. If you're more impatient and want to practice multiple times a day, then that might result in a waste of foamy milk and espresso shots that you can't finish.

In that case, Matt Woodburn-Simmonds recommends practicing with dish soap, which can lead to similar (although completely undrinkable) canvases for your art. He says, "You can steam water with a drop of washing up liquid in it to create a foam similar to that of steamed milk. Pouring this into water that has been colored with food coloring allows you to practice your latte art pouring without wasting lots of milk. Just don't try to drink anything you make." Once you've improved your techniques with pouring speed and pitcher placement, you can return to milk and espresso and pour your heart out. And while you're getting all adventurous, you might also want to start adding a scoop of peanut butter to your lattes, too.